Before
by Masamune's Song
Summary: Vin/Re-L. Stranded together in an empty waste, a shared memory and a shared fate bind them together. Now a two-shot.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Does not own Ergo, or anything associated with Ergo Proxy. I'm . . . not even entirely sure I understand what's going on at the end.

* * *

Being stranded in the middle of nowhere with someone of the opposite gender was _not _a recipe for romance. It wasn't. Re-L didn't care what everyone else thought: she could be alone on a landship forever, with only one immigrant for company, and Romdo's rules of decorum would never be breached.

Any immigrant but Vincent.

The problem was, she was gratingly, glaringly aware of the fact that he was here, of the fact that beneath Vincent's skin lay Ergo Proxy.

They never talked about _that night_, but the memory of it hung between them: sharpening her tongue, stretching in the silences between them, lingering in his gaze when he thought she wasn't watching. Every night when they sat down to another dinner of beans, they bowed their heads—not praying— just not looking at each other, and very deliberately not thinking about the thing that had almost happened between them.

_

* * *

Awakening_.

A word written in the shower steam, dripping like dark blood. Even as she stumbled back from her own bathroom mirror, her investigator's instincts kicked in and she saw that the finger that wrote it was too large to be human, and that whatever had scrawled the message had talons, for the word was haloed by curling slivers where a claw etched the mirror.

She did not have time to see any more than that before the ceiling imploded, the impact flinging her backward into the wall.

But it was not the physical impact that held her.

Neither was it the fear.

She saw it.

It saw her.

And the connection between them was as instantaneous as it was absolute.

It was huge: more shadow than substance, thin and hulking at once.

It closed the distance between them in a movement too fast for her to see, and bent over her to murder or devour, and she could not move.

She could never move, ever again.

Vaguely, she was aware that the strap of her sheer undershirt had slipped off, leaving her breast exposed, and still she could not even try to look away from the monstrous majesty of its face.

It was grinning, but it grinned the way a mask grins: strangely expressionless even as it showed all its teeth. The skin was midnight black, but she could hardly see it behind the exoskeleton. A kind of ivory half-mask covered most of its features, then branched out—twining hard, white snakes through the creature's short black hair.

The eyes glowed strangely in the dark. Green. Or blue. Looking at her with more searing intensity than anyone had ever dared to look at her before. It angled its head this way and that, as if trying to place her, or search her face for a sign.

Absurdly, what came to her were Iggy's words, teasing her: _You _like _him, don't you?_

When the taloned hand touched her face, it was as if she had never been touched before. The dark, dry hand touched a chord inside her that hummed like the nursery cryotank in which she was born. It angled her face up, bending over her like a lover.

_Oh, Creator, it's going to—_

But what it did was more intimate than a kiss.

A tear welled in the shining eye, and slid down the black cheek: a star sliding down the night sky.

_The ancients believed we could see our destinies in the stars._

Her own body answered, and, though she had not even realized that her eyes were filling, a single tear slid down her face.

She had not cried in front of anyone before, ever.

And now she had shared with this creature what she had never shared with anyone: raw emotion and her own wet salt.

Its thumb touched her lips, then. Not gently, but not with the crushing strength she saw it to be capable of. The taloned digit pushed between her lips, ran along her teeth, and for a moment, she tasted the dark skin.

It tasted like the end of all things. Like the cement of her ceiling, and the prayers of her city, and death.

It had paused, holding itself in her mouth, feeling her feel it.

She had the sense that something profound was happening to her, something that would hurt, but _more_ was the only thing that could happen.

And it would have, too, but for the second black shape that fell from the sky and attacked the monster pinning her to the wall.

Her body still did not remember itself, but with Ergo Proxy gone her legs forgot how to hold her up, and she slid down the wall and sat, unblinking, until Iggy came to pick her out of the rubble.

* * *

Her head bowed over her beans, Re-L knew that the second creature had not saved her. It had been far too late to save her. The single touch had blasted her to ash and burned her shadow into the wall. She still remained there, boneless, a black line of mascara running down her face, sitting beneath the writing on the wall.

_Awakening._

The word shone: dark clarity etched into a smooth cloud of fog.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimer about not owning any of this. Not for profit.

* * *

This had been a long time coming.

The pull towards him— like an itch, like a barely-forgotten memory, like that damned hair he always missed when he was shaving— had plagued her from the moment she saw him. She wanted . . . something. Something just beneath his skin. Something monstrous and hungry and perfect.

Ergo. Proxy of the little death.

It hadn't been so bad while the ship was moving. A cold shower in the morning and then a long day spent in the wind above decks kept things tame. The only heat came from the knowledge that he was just below her feet, or, worse, behind her at the wheel. It was all the heat she really needed.

The only weakness she permitted herself was allowing him to put her hair up: feeling his fingers working over her scalp—sometimes just a little too slowly, feeling his brush tear at her snarls, feeling his nearness.

It was not just desire.

Desire she was more-or-less impervious to. Men had wanted her, and she had tolerated the attention. This was something more.

It was an urge to destroy and to be destroyed, to fight forever and never be separated.

Now, with the failing of the wind, she was practically crawling out of her own skin. It wouldn't take much to make her snap. Day after day passed filled with nothing but hunger and silence and _him_.

It happened out on the plains. On a barren rock beneath a barren sky. The act of making life.

Pino had gone missing again, dancing off the ship to her tuneless melody. Like a fool, Re-L had assumed Pino wouldn't go far when she said she had to go "sing to the wind."

She ordered Vincent to search the waste to the north, while she stalked off southward, furious with him for not preventing her mistake. As the sun dipped west, she had given up searching for the night, and was within sight of the ship when the ground started to shake.

Earthquakes were not too uncommon, but this one sent ripples across the dry lakebed, tossing the stymied ship like a storm. A crack like black lightning streaked across the ground toward her, and she turned and ran, flat out, toward the hover ship.

Until the earth disappeared from beneath her feet.

She was falling, falling, and she had just drawn breath to scream when a hand caught her.

Or rather, a claw.

His huge palm wrapped nearly all the way around her arm, and his free hand dug into the side of the crevasse, putting deep gouge-marks into stone.

With a single leap, he had them both back on solid ground, and was holding her steady as the last of the tremors subsided. In the fading dusk, his white half mask leered at her, just as it had on the night of her awakening, the night of three tears. One hers, one his, and one Mosque's as she died.

Re-L did not think about kissing him, she simply _did_.

For a split second, as her mouth crashed against the hard, bony grin, she thought she was doing it because she was still the old Re-L, Re-L the princess, granting a kiss to her savior. But the old Re-L did not kiss people in gratitude.

And besides, this was a kiss from a soldier to an enemy warrior: bruising, biting, more teeth than lip. A kiss like a scream.

Claws dug into her back, but it didn't matter. She had to finish what had begun in the fog steaming her bathroom mirror, what had begun before she was ever born.

Surprisingly, he tried to pull away from her, as if cautious of his own strength, but she was having none of it. She ripped off the twisting half-mask, and stared into his black face, dark even in the gathering darkness, into eyes that flashed greenish-blue.

She kissed him again: pink lips against jet black ones, and then Re-L was fumbling with the front of his trousers and he was shredding her dusty pants.

It happened right there. Lying inches from the edge of a precipice, gravel stinging her back. Ergo seemed in his element in the hazy twilight, in the death of another day. He was thick, and hard, and Re-L sweated with the effort of being broken, glorying in the pain and the destruction and the inevitability. Ergo was sweating, too, but it was with the effort of holding back.

The climax came in a single sharp, stabbing thrill. Death spilled into the secret parts of truth with a shudder and a shrill cry.

Then he rolled off of her, collapsing into humanity again.

It was not until it was all done, with her clothes in shreds and one of her cat-ear hair knots undone, that she realized she was no longer a virgin.

Vincent had fallen asleep. Being Ergo always seemed to take a lot out of him. He was quite cute in his unconsciousness, but when she put a hand on his face, he burrowed into the gravel as if not wanting to wake.

Her face twisted into a half smile as she gazed down at him. Then she jerked the hated hair out of his chin.


End file.
